Monday, July 10, 2017

MSM, Still Living in Propaganda-ville

As much as the U.S. mainstream media wants people to believe that it is
the Guardian of Truth, it is actually lost in a wilderness of propaganda
and falsehoods, a dangerous land of delusion that is putting the future
of humankind at risk as tension escalate with nuclear-armed Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses a crowd on May 9, 2014,
celebrating the 69th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany and the
70th anniversary of the liberation of the Crimean port city of
Sevastopol from the Nazis. (Russian government photo)

This media problem has grown over recent decades as lucrative
careerism has replaced responsible professionalism. Pack journalism has
always been a threat to quality reporting but now it has evolved into a
self-sustaining media lifestyle in which the old motto, “there’s safety
in numbers,” is borne out by the fact that being horrendously wrong,
such as on Iraq’s WMD, leads to almost no accountability because so many
important colleagues were wrong as well.

Similarly, there has been no accountability after many mainstream
journalists and commentators falsely stated as flat-fact that “all 17
U.S. intelligence agencies” concurred that Russia did “meddle” in last
November’s U.S. election.

For months, this claim has been the go-to put-down whenever anyone
questions the groupthink of Russian venality perverting American
democracy. Even the esteemed “Politifact” deemed the assertion “true.”
But it was never true.

It was at best a needled distortion of a claim by President Obama’s
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper when he issued a statement
last Oct. 7 alleging Russian meddling. Because Clapper was the chief of
the U.S. Intelligence Community, his opinion morphed into a claim that
it represented the consensus of all 17 intelligence agencies, a
dishonest twist that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton
began touting.

However, for people who understand how the U.S. Intelligence
Community works, the claim of a 17-agencies consensus has a specific
meaning, some form of a National Intelligence Estimate (or NIE) that
seeks out judgments and dissents from the various agencies.

But there was no NIE regarding alleged Russian meddling and there
apparently wasn’t even a formal assessment from a subset of the agencies
at the time of Clapper’s statement. President Obama did not order a
publishable assessment until December – after the election – and it was
not completed until Jan. 6, when a report from Clapper’s office
presented the opinions of analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency,
Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency –
three agencies (or four if you count the DNI’s office), not 17.

Lacking Hard Evidence

The report also contained no hard evidence
of a Russian “hack” and amounted to a one-sided circumstantial case at
best. However, by then, the U.S. mainstream media had embraced the
“all-17-intelligence-agencies” refrain and anyone who disagreed,
including President Trump, was treated as delusional. The argument went:
“How can anyone question what all 17 intelligence agencies have
confirmed as true?”

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (right) talks with
President Barack Obama in the Oval Office, with John Brennan and other
national security aides present. (Photo credit: Office of Director of
National Intelligence)

It wasn’t until May 8 when then-former DNI Clapper belatedly set the record straight
in sworn congressional testimony in which he explained that there were
only three “contributing agencies” from which analysts were
“hand-picked.”

The reference to “hand-picked” analysts pricked the ears of some
former U.S. intelligence analysts who had suffered through earlier
periods of “politicized” intelligence when malleable analysts were chosen to deliver what their political bosses wanted to hear.

On May 23, also in congressional testimony, former CIA Director John
Brennan confirmed Clapper’s description, saying only four of the 17 U.S.
intelligence agencies took part in the assessment.

Brennan said the Jan. 6 report “followed the general model of how you
want to do something like this with some notable exceptions. It only
involved the FBI, NSA and CIA as well as the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence. It wasn’t a full inter-agency community
assessment that was coordinated among the 17 agencies.”

After this testimony, some of the major news organizations, which had
been waving around the “17-intelligence-agencies” meme, subtly changed
their phrasing to either depict Russian “meddling” as an established
fact no longer requiring attribution or referred to the “unanimous
judgment” of the Intelligence Community without citing a specific
number.

This “unanimous judgment” formulation was deceptive, too, because it
suggested that all 17 agencies were in accord albeit without exactly
saying that. For a regular reader of The New York Times or a frequent
viewer of CNN, the distinction would almost assuredly not be detected.

For more than a month after the Clapper-Brennan testimonies, there was no formal correction.

A Belated Correction

Finally, on June 25, the Times’ hand was forced
when White House correspondent Maggie Haberman reverted to the old
formulation, mocking Trump for “still refus[ing] to acknowledge a basic
fact agreed upon by 17 American intelligence agencies that he now
oversees: Russia orchestrated the attacks, and did it to help get him
elected.”

New York Times building in New York City. (Photo from Wikipedia)

When this falsehood was called to the Times’ attention, it had little
choice but to append a correction to the article, noting that the
intelligence “assessment was made by four intelligence agencies — the
Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central
Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the
National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17
organizations in the American intelligence community.”

The Associated Press ran a similar “clarification” applied to some of
its fallacious reporting repeating the “17-intelligence-agencies” meme.

So, you might have thought that the mainstream media was finally
adjusting its reporting to conform to reality. But that would mean that
one of the pillars of the Russia-gate “scandal” had crumbled, the
certainty that Russia and Vladimir Putin did “meddle” in the election.

The story would have to go back to square one and the major news
organizations would have to begin reporting on whether or not there ever
was solid evidence to support what had become a “certainty” – and there
appeared to be no stomach for such soul-searching. Since pretty much
all the important media figures had made the same error, it would be
much easier to simply move on as if nothing had changed.

That would mean that skepticism would still be unwelcome and curious
leads would not be followed. For instance, there was a head-turning
reference in an otherwise typical Washington Post take-out on June 25
accusing Russia of committing “the crime of the century.”

A reference, stuck deep inside the five-page opus, said, “Some of the
most critical technical intelligence on Russia came from another
country, officials said. Because of the source of the material, the NSA
was reluctant to view it with high confidence.”

Though the Post did not identify the country, this reference suggests
that more than one key element of the case for Russian culpability was
based not on direct investigations by the U.S. intelligence agencies,
but on the work of external organizations.

Earlier, the Democratic National Committee denied the FBI access to
its supposedly hacked computers, forcing the investigators to rely on a
DNC contractor called CrowdStrike, which has a checkered record of
getting this sort of analytics right and whose chief technology officer,
Dmitri Alperovitch, is an anti-Putin Russian émigré with ties to the
anti-Russian think tank, Atlantic Council.

Relying on Outsiders

You might be wondering why something as important as this “crime of
the century,” which has pushed the world closer to nuclear annihilation,
is dependent on dubious entities outside the U.S. government with
possible conflicts of interest.

President Donald Trump being sworn in on Jan. 20, 2017. (Screen shot from Whitehouse.gov)

If the U.S. government really took this issue seriously, which it
should, why didn’t the FBI seize the DNC’s computers and insist that
impartial government experts lead the investigation? And why – given the
extraordinary expertise of the NSA in computer hacking – is “some of
the most critical technical intelligence on Russia [coming] from another
country,” one that doesn’t inspire the NSA’s confidence?

But such pesky questions are not likely to be asked or answered by a
mainstream U.S. media that displays deep-seated bias toward both Putin
and Trump.

Mostly, major news outlets continue to brush aside the clarifications
and return to various formulations that continue to embrace the
“17-intelligence-agencies” canard, albeit in slightly different forms,
such as references to the collective Intelligence Community without the
specific number. Anyone who questions this established conventional
wisdom is still crazy and out of step.

For instance, James Holmes of Esquire was stunned
on Thursday when Trump at a news conference in Poland reminded the
traveling press corps about the inaccurate reporting regarding the 17
intelligence agencies and said he still wasn’t entirely sure about
Russia’s guilt.

“In public, he’s still casting doubt on the intelligence community’s
finding that Russia interfered in the 2016 election nearly nine months
after the fact,” Holmes sputtered before describing Trump’s comment as a
“rant.”

So, if you thought that a chastened mainstream media might stop in
the wake of the “17-intelligence-agencies” falsehood and rethink the
whole Russia-gate business, you would have been sadly mistaken.

But the problem is not just the question of whether Russia hacked
into Democratic emails and slipped them to WikiLeaks for publication
(something that both Russia and WikiLeaks deny). Perhaps the larger
danger is how the major U.S. news outlets have adopted a consistently
propagandistic approach toward everything relating to Russia.

Hating Putin

This pattern traces back to the earliest days of Vladimir Putin’s
presidency in 2000 when he began to rein in the U.S.-prescribed “shock
therapy,” which had sold off Russia’s assets to well-connected insiders,
making billions of dollars for the West-favored “oligarchs,” even as
the process threw millions of average Russian into poverty.

Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who
pushed for the Ukraine coup and helped pick the post-coup leaders.

But the U.S. mainstream media’s contempt for Putin reached new heights
after he helped President Obama head off neoconservative (and liberal
interventionist) demands for a full-scale U.S. military assault on Syria
in August 2013 and helped bring Iran into a restrictive nuclear
agreement when the neocons wanted to bomb-bomb-bomb Iran.

The neocons delivered their payback to Putin in early 2014 by
supporting a violent coup in Ukraine, overthrowing elected President
Viktor Yanukovych and installing a fiercely anti-Russian regime. The
U.S. operation was spearheaded
by neocon National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman and
neocon Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria
Nuland, with enthusiastic support from neocon Sen. John McCain.

Nuland was heard in an intercepted pre-coup phone call with U.S.
Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt discussing who should become the new leaders
and pondering how to “glue” or “midwife this thing.”

Despite the clear evidence of U.S. interference in Ukrainian
politics, the U.S. government and the mainstream media embraced the coup
and accused Putin of “aggression” when ethnic Russians in eastern
Ukraine, called the Donbas, resisted the coup regime.

When ethnic Russians and other citizens in Crimea voted
overwhelmingly in a referendum to reject the coup regime and rejoin
Russia – a move protected by some of the 20,000 Russian troops inside
Crimea as part of a basing agreement – that became a Russian “invasion.”
But it was the most peculiar “invasion,” since there were no images of
tanks crashing across borders or amphibious landing craft on Crimean
beaches, because no such “invasion” had occurred.

However, in virtually every instance, the U.S. mainstream media
insisted on the most extreme anti-Russian propaganda line and accused
people who questioned this Official Narrative of disseminating Russian “propaganda”
– or being a “Moscow stooge” or acting as a “useful fool.” There was no
tolerance for skepticism about whatever the State Department or the
Washington think tanks were saying.

Trump Meets Putin

So, as Trump prepares for his first meeting with Putin at the G-20
summit in Hamburg, Germany, the U.S. mainstream media has been in a
frenzy, linking up its groupthinks about the Ukraine “invasion” with its
groupthinks about Russia “hacking” the election.

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius. (Photo credit: Aude)

In a July 3 editorial,
The Washington Post declared, “Mr. Trump simply cannot fail to admonish
Mr. Putin for Russia’s attempts to meddle in the 2016 presidential
election. He must make clear the United States will not tolerate it,
period. Naturally, this is a difficult issue for Mr. Trump, who reaped
the benefit of Russia’s intervention and now faces a special counsel’s
investigation, but nonetheless, in his first session with Mr. Putin, the
president must not hesitate to be blunt. …

“On Ukraine, Mr. Trump must also display determination. Russia
fomented an armed uprising and seized Crimea in violation of
international norms, and it continues to instigate violence in the
Donbas. Mr. Trump ought to make it unmistakably clear to Mr.Putin that
the United States will not retreat from the sanctions imposed over
Ukraine until the conditions of peace agreements are met.”

Along the same lines, even while suggesting the value of some
collaboration with Russia toward ending the war in Syria, Post columnist
David Ignatius wrote in a July 5 column,
“Russian-American cooperation on Syria faces a huge obstacle right now.
It would legitimize a Russian regime that invaded Ukraine and meddled
in U.S. and European elections, in addition to its intervention in
Syria.”

Note the smug certainty of Ignatius and the Post editors. There is no
doubt that Russia “invaded” Ukraine; “seized” Crimea; “meddled” in U.S.
and European elections. Yet all these groupthinks should be subjected
to skepticism, not simply treated as undeniable truths.

But seeing only one side to a story is where the U.S. mainstream
media is at this point in history. Yes, it is possible that Russia was
responsible for the Democratic hacks and did funnel the material to
WikiLeaks, but evidence has so far been lacking. And, instead of
presenting both sides fairly, the major media acts as if only one side
deserves any respect and dissenting views must be ridiculed and
condemned.

As offensive as this rejection of true truth-seeking may be, it also
represents an extraordinary danger when mixed with the existential risk
of nuclear conflagration.

With the stakes this high, the demand for hard evidence – and the
avoidance of soft-minded groupthink – should go without question.
Journalists and commentators should hold themselves to professional
precision, not slide into sloppy careerism, lost in “propaganda-ville.”